To Carnac's standing stones

TO CARNAC’S STANDING STONES

As you stand erect

    roughened and darkened by the ageing hand of time

Your feet thrust firmly into the ageless earth

              What do you feel?

You who have known dark, rough times

              What do you think

As gay-clad hordes of holiday-makers

    flit like thoughtless, sun-drunk butterflies

         from stone to stone,

As children clamber in irreverent ignorance

    upon your fallen forms

              What do you feel?

Is your inward ear of memory tuned to other sounds

And do your sightless faces see other visions

        unheard, unseen by us?

And when the sun sinks down to rest

    and shadowy silence descends upon the earth

              What do you think?

Then with the lingering warmth of the ageless sun

              upon your scarred surface,

    The feel of the eternal wind,

    The same age-old odours rising from the earth

              Are you free to dream?

As you stand in long ranks facing forward

              like ready troops braced

              against the forces of the universe,

    witness to the primeval existential awe

    that drove Neolithic man to set you there

              What forces do you feel?

You who have stood against six thousand years

    of scorching sun, of whipping wind and lashing rain,

    of battles brave and desperate,

    of humankind

Have you finally found the foe to make you fall?

And when you feel, where hirsute man once trod barefoot,

    the tramp of sandalled feet

    deforming the ancient foundations of your templed forms

And feel the acid bite of our polluted air

    eating into your rough hewn sides

              What do you think?

You standing testimonies to the powerful urge

        of Life’s eternal forces

    Stranded in an age shut off from them

              What, oh what, do you feel?